I cover both timepieces and other luxury items that interest me such as cars and technology. An unshakable interest in wrist watches mixed with a passionate curiosity afforded me the opportunity to make them my career. My website aBlogtoWatch.com is the highest-trafficked blog on timepieces, and I have been fortunate enough to write or have written for some of the most esteemed luxury, men’s interest, watch, and gadget publications online and in print – including Luxist.com, TechCrunch, Departures International, and Centurion. My style is conversational, and I won’t bore you with needless technical talk or marketing lingo. I tell it like it is and attempt to share my passion with you - my goal is to get you interested in what I like. A lot of my time is spent traveling Europe to meet with esteemed watch makers and to get a hands-on look at many of the rare and interesting timepieces and items I write about.

9/14/2012 @ 9:16PM68,408 views

The Eroding Exclusivity Of The Tourbillon Watch

Tourbillon-based watch by A. Lange & Sohne - German

In French, “tourbillon” translates into “whirlwind,” but in the watch making industry it is the term of a relatively complex feature present in some high-end timepieces. By default, all wrist watches are assumed to tell the time. Each function beyond that is often referred to as a “complication.” These are features which enhance a watch movement or offer some additional piece of information. A tourbillon is an historic complication originally designed to improve the accuracy of pocket watches. It was developed by the famous watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet. For most of its life, the tourbillon was an interesting but often obscure feature in mechanical watches.

During the latter part of the 20th century, the tourbillon experienced a comeback. The onslaught of quartz watches almost killed the mechanical watch industry in the 1980s. As a result, some clever people in Switzerland decided that the mechanical watch would fight back by transforming itself into almost exclusively a luxury item. The more complicated the movement, the more luxurious it would be. The concept was far from new, being borrowed from the reality that very complex watches can be extremely difficult and time consuming to produce. This undeniable fact is a cornerstone of why some mechanical watches are extremely expensive.

Tourbillon-based watch by Memorigin - Chinese

High-end watch makers discovered that the tourbillon is a beautiful thing to watch visually. The irony is that its purpose of attempting to improve the accuracy of movements was never really validated. A tourbillon is easy to understand if you see one working. It is a variation on an escapement mechanism whereby the entire escapement assembly (often referred to as the heartbeat of a watch) rotates constantly on its own axis. In an attempt to bring more attention to their visual splendor, watch makers moved the location of the tourbillon to the front of the dial – making it possible to see the tourbillon when looking at one’s watch. From a marketing perspective, the tourbillon looks good, is complicated to assemble, and is steeped in history. It makes for a perfect complement to something expensive.

Luxury watch makers painted the tourbillon as an exclusive complication that only the best “watch houses” could manufacture. One by one, most of the best European brands began to come out with their own tourbillon-based timepieces. In the early 2000s, the tourbillon experienced a golden age as adventurous designers began to develop and produce a range of variations on the tourbillon which each added technical (but not practical) splendor to the watches they were housed in.

Luxury’s love affair with the tourbillon resulted in consumers identifying the tourbillon with one key concept, “expensive.” While many people wanted a tourbillon because it was fun to watch, more wanted a tourbillon because it told people they were wearing something expensive. If you had a watch with more than one tourbillon, then the implication was that you were worth even more.

Tourbillon-based watch by Greubel Forsey - Swiss

At first the tourbillon was truly exclusive in the sense that it required extremely difficult to produce parts and could only be assembled by highly trained watch makers. Then volume kicked in and the tourbillon became much more common. Most all high-end brands had products with tourbillons in them, but the appeal of the complication seemed to remain. While the tourbillon may have been less exclusive, it was certainly still very high-end.

The average price of a Swiss watch with a tourbillon complication contained inside of it is $50,000 – $100,000. That price frequently goes even higher. As more brands offered tourbillon movements, an increasing portion of the public became familiar with the once rare mechanical curiosity. Everybody who wanted to feel rich wanted to own one – though few could afford them.

During this entire time, the Chinese watch movement industry was toiling away trying to produce their own tourbillon-based movements that it could sell as lower priced alternatives to those offered by the Swiss. This didn’t happen right away. Some brands at first even labeled watch dials “tourbillon” when one wasn’t even present in the timepiece. Early Chinese tourbillon movements weren’t very good – even if they were more or less copies of Swiss products. Over the last few years, Chinese mechanical movement makers have gotten much better, to the point where relatively affordable Swiss tourbillon alternatives are available. These movements are a fraction of the price of their Swiss mentors and differ in three key ways. First, Chinese tourbillons aren’t as well finished. This more or less translates into the fact that they aren’t made with metal which is as nicely polished or decorated. Second, they aren’t as accurate. Swiss-made tourbillon movements ironically aren’t often the most accurate around, but the best of them offer very good performance. Like most mechanical Chinese-made movements, their tourbillons simply aren’t as accurate as their European counterparts. For many buyers this isn’t a huge issue as they rely on a phone or other device as their primary timekeeping mechanism. Third, Chinese tourbillon watches often come from unknown producers. There are only a handful of mechanical movement makers in China capable of producing acceptable tourbillon movements. Some offer these movements in brands which bear their own name, and others exclusively sell their movements to third-party brands. For the consumer, it can be complicated or confusing to know exactly who produced their Chinese tourbillon and how good it is.

Tourbillon-based watch by Longio - Chinese

Nevertheless, in my opinion, Chinese tourbillons today are nothing to laugh at. Consumers who appreciate the mechanism have very viable options from Chinese manufacturers, especially if they cannot afford those from Switzerland. This is extremely important because right now there are actually so many available watches with Chinese tourbillon movements at prices which are one tenth or less of those from Switzerland that the exclusivity of the complication has been severely eroded.

Consumers wanting to communicate wealth and status to the public by owning tourbillon watches will be able to do so less and less. The average price of a watch with a higher quality Chinese tourbillon is between about $3,000 – $5,000. There are dozens of brands which offer them, and many of these watches look quite good. In Hong Kong I was able to experience this for myself.

Tourbillon-based watch by Ulysse Nardin - Swiss

I spend a lot of time viewing the world’s best watches and have seen everything from basic to extremely exotic Swiss tourbillon timepieces. Recently at the 2012 Hong Kong Watch & Clock Fair I was able to update my knowledge of tourbillons from China. What I saw mostly impressed me. Enthusiastic producers in China sell some beautiful tourbillons which are 90% of what the Swiss ones are. An argument can be made that the missing 10% is worth a 90% price gap between the Swiss and Asian tourbillon, but the reality is that many consumers will flock to those from China which offer most of what they are looking for.

The highest-end Swiss tourbillon watch will always have a special status and cache among the world’s “in the know” elite. However, the tourbillon’s wider reputation as an indicator of extreme wealth is about to quickly erode as inexpensive Chinese tourbillons increasingly hit the market.

Are we there yet? No. Chinese tourbillon watch makers still face a distribution dilemma. Their products are rather easily available in Asia, but globally it is difficult to purchase Chinese tourbillon watches from established high-end watch retailers. You simply won’t see a $5,000 Chinese tourbillon sitting next to a $100,000 Swiss tourbillon at the same store – at least not yet. If demand for Chinese tourbillon watches picks up among enthusiasts, then retailers world-wide will increasingly carry these products, making them more widely available.